The present invention relates to a system such as a word processor for editing and printing a document and more particularly to a printing system fit for printing a document which includes text, patterns, graphs, etc.
Word processors hitherto in use were, in many cases, executed by a packaged program with both editing process and printing process combined therein.
If a text editing program and a pattern editing program are considered, each of them had its own editing process program and printing process program. In such case, it was impossible for some pattern data edited by a pattern editing program to be printed by a text editing program. Conversely, it was impossible for some text data edited by a text editing program to be printed by a pattern editing program.
Recently, there has been an increasing demand for a system that can edit and print a document with text, patterns, and other such elements integrated therein. To meet the demand, there are some text editing programs provided with pattern and graphic processing functions, but their performance compares very poorly to packaged programs dedicated to processing of patterns or graphics.
While there has been the need for an economical document processing system making use of abundant functions of dedicated packages to process text, patterns, graphs, etc. for editing and effectively printing such data on a single sheet of paper in a given format, however processing programs in conventional word processors have not been adapted for edition and printing of such documents.
There is a system proposed in the publication of Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 57-157343/1982 which divides one page into logical areas and thereby makes it possible to print a plurality of output contents in one page. But this system prints a one-page image in an area, without any concept of an integrated document being involved, and its object was to reduce the consumption of recording paper.
The prior art greatly contributed to the improvements of the functions of editing programs, but efforts for such improvement have been separately directed to each of the different types of programs namely text, patterns, etc. Although the editing function of each of the different types of programs has been highly developed, such a situation is brought about that it is now very difficult to incorporate these individual editing programs into a united program capable of editing and printing a document, in view of complexity and capacity of these programs and their data structures.